Garbage Day Etiquette

Since we don't have a garbage-day calendar, we have to rely upon our neighbors for cues as to when garbage day is and what sorts of things will be collected that day (recycling, yard waste, etc). In our first week here we noticed that on Thursday evening houses in the neighborhood had deposited both garbage cans and blue recycling bins to their curbs. Most houses around here put out their garbage earlier than our old 'hood in Toronto (6pm vs. 9pm). This is good for us as there are lots of examples of the extent of the items we can bring to the curb for pickup on Friday morning.

Our First Garbage Day:

Seeing as we had just moved, we obviously had a TON of garbage and cardboard boxes to bring to the curb (professional packing services use a TON of newsprint to wrap and protect your stuff as they pack it in the cardboard boxes). So, this left us with the decision as to how many garbage bags filled with packing newsprint could/should we put out at the curb for our first garbage day.

In Toronto there is a 6-bag limit, but since we didn't have internet access at home the first week we were here, we couldn't look up the West Hartford limits. I know it sounds crazy, but I didn't want our neighbors' first impression of us to be "the house with the mountain of garbage" making us seem like some ridiculously wasteful household or something. As I was calculating just how many weeks it would take for us to dispose of all our post-moving garbage by putting out 6 bags per week, in a bold move, Christopher decided to put out ALL 27 of our garbage bags! So we did, and just hoped for the best.

BEFORE:

AFTER:


Woohoo! I can't believe they took EVERYTHING. Thank you West Hartford Environmental Services!